New Spiceworks Partner - Fabric Technologies

Fabric is an award winning UK based systems integrator. The company is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with expertise in cloud computing and Microsoft Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS). The team at Fabric is pleased to be sponsoring the Microsoft Exchange community group on Spiceworks. Fabric has recently picked up two awards - the CRN Channel Awards 2010 (Midmarket Reseller of the Year category) and Document Management Magazine’s 2010 awards (Business Process Management Product of the Year category). Rob, Randy, Leon and Mike from Fabric are looking forward to meeting people in the group and helping with any cloud, BPOS or Exchange related questions.

Spiceworks (the company)....what is happening here. Why are you allowing an MSP to be a Spiceworks "partner"? Sure I sort of understand, but as Scott mentions what about the other MSPs in here.

I for one an slightly offended. I don't feel directly threatened as an MSP by Fabric Tech since they are in the UK, but what if I wanted to be the US partner? How would that go down? What about the other MSPs in the UK? How are they supposed to look at this? You have basically made it okay for Fabric Tech employees to push their solutions on to everyone here in the community.

No offense to the guys at Fabric Tech, but this shouldn't have happened and they shouldn't be a Spiceworks Partner. They don't really offer a "unique" product or service over the other MSPs here.

Going down this path can and will damage the reputation Spiceworks has with some of it MSP followers.

Thanks as always for the valuable feedback! Tabrez and SAM had a good phone conversation about this issue and it looks like there are some misconceptions about what it means to be a partner. We may not have done the best job about clarifying that, and we'll make sure that we do moving forwards.

We have had MSPs advertising with Spiceworks since 2007, but you may not have seen their ads and realized this. The practice of introducing new green guys is something that I started doing, so it is a relatively recent development.

When I introduce someone as a partner, it only means that they are sponsoring Spiceworks by advertising with us. It doesn't mean that they were picked over others. We welcome anyone who wants to support Spiceworks with sponsorships of their IT related products and services. (Learn more here) In reality a better term might be "sponsor" and we'll try and do a better job of being clearer about that.

Anyone who is a partner or sponsor does have to play by the community rules. While they are allowed to mention their products and services, they still have to follow the guidelines laid out here:
http://community.spiceworks.com/education/projects/Community_Guidelines
and here is a description of the partner role:
http://community.spiceworks.com/help/Community_Whos_Who
Just like you, green guys have a pepper level, and they have to build their reputation on the community by participating, contributing and being good community members. Just having the green designation doesn't elevate their status, it just means they advertise and support Spiceworks.

In future announcements about new partners, I'll make sure to re-iterate all of this, and to make it clear that we welcome anyone who wants to advertise and participate as a partner or sponsor.

I welcome any future feedback and discussion about the issue - either post back or PM me if you want to chat offline.